​Brussels scuppers Cameron’s EU referendum pledge

European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker has ruled that no treaty negotiations on the UK’s EU membership will take place until two years after Prime Minister David Cameron’s proposed referendum date.

“No treaty change
proposals are envisaged until after November 2019, the end of Mr
Juncker’s mandate as president of the commission,” an
official told the Times newspaper.

It is also thought that while 2019 would be the earliest time
plans could be formalized, negotiations would still not begin
until 2020.

The move would leave in tatters Cameron’s pledge to hold an
in/out referendum on the EU in 2017 if he is re-elected next
month.

The Tory manifesto, released Tuesday, argues that continued UK
membership of the EU must be based on two conditions.

“We want national parliaments to be able to work together to
block unwanted European legislation and we want an end to our
commitment to ‘ever closer union’ as enshrined in the treaty to
which every country has to sign up,” it says.

The Tory position on EU membership received another blow on
Tuesday when Gibraltar’s Chief Minister Fabian Picardo said the
government of the self-governing British territory would push for
a “different degree of membership” of the EU if Britain
holds a referendum on whether to leave.

“In the event of there being a referendum, each of the areas
that vote, each of the nations that vote, Gibraltar included,
should be counted separately,” Picardo told the Financial
Times.

Gibraltar's economy would face an “existential threat”
if Britain left the EU without securing a way to maintain access
to the EU's 500-million-strong single market, he added.

Picardo doubts “even the most rabid anti-Europeans in the UK,
in their moments of supreme madness, would advocate a ‘complete
out’.”